Tesla's Elon Musk Reminds Media His Cars Can Spy On Them

As noted by my colleague Joann Muller, electric car maker Tesla is experiencing some road rage over a review in the New York Times that faulted its model S's performance in cold weather. Reports Muller:

In a series of tweets and then in a phone call to CNBC, [CEO Elon] Musk blasted reporter John Broder’s damaging review of the plug-in sedan in last Friday’s New York Times, saying the car died because the reporter didn’t follow the company’s test-drive instructions. And Musk claims he has proof: “Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn’t actually charge to max & took a long detour,” according to one tweet. Musk told CNBC that Broder took “an extended tour through Manhattan” and at times drove “10 miles or above the speed limit.”

The most interesting tweet to me was the one captured above, where Musk refers to Tesla's ability to monitor everything that a driver does in one of its cars -- at least when it comes to the car's operation. "Tesla data logging is only turned on with explicit written permission from customers," tweeted Musk. "But after Top Gear BS, we always keep it on for media."

("Top Gear BS" refers to a 2008 BBC review of a Tesla car that the company also disputed and eventually sued over.)

Thanks to more and more of our belongings being "smart" -- or “tethered” as Jonathan Zittrain calls them -- they're constantly capturing data about us and in some cases reporting back to the companies that made them how we’re using them. It means your car might keep a log of how you drove it or that your Xbox might be tracking every person in the room and watching their facial expressions to decide which ads to show them.

Tesla says it always asks for customers' permission before doing this --even if that's not made clear in the owner's manual -- but journalists taking a car for a free spin don't get that same courtesy. While journos are recording their impression of the car's performance, it's doing the same thing to them.

Tesla says it's planning a blog post about the Times piece for Tuesday or Wednesday but would not say whether it will include the log of Broder's drive.